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• Our readingkorrents.com

  Anthropic prices its Claude subscription plans as loss leaders relative to its own API rates.

  Anthropic

  Their words

  The subscription tiers are still enormous loss leaders: $20/month for your first $200/month of tokens at API rates for the "Pro" tier, and $100 or $200/month for your first $1500 or $3000/month of tokens at the "Max 5x" or "Max 20x" tiers.

  braddelong.substack.com

Co-creator of Django and creator of Datasette; writes daily at simonwillison.net.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Just knowing that there is an unpublished solution to a problem might trigger millions of dollars in LLM spending to get there first.

  LLMs

  Their words

  Just knowing that there is an unpublished solution to a problem might trigger millions of dollars in LLM spending to get there first.

  On the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problemsimonwillison.net

Director of institutional asset management at Ritholtz Wealth Management. Writes the A Wealth of Common Sense blog and co-hosts the Animal Spirits podcast with Michael Batnick.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The United States is not at risk of a financial crisis caused by the size of its government debt.

  Americagovernment

  Their words

  So my baseline assumption is that people will continue complaining about the trillions of dollars we have in debt but it won’t lead to a financial crisis.

  My Most Contrarian Opinion Right Nowawealthofcommonsense.com

Founded PSPDFKit in 2011 and ran it for a decade. Came back from a break to work on AI agents — the OpenClaw project, and OpenAI, joined in February 2026. Writes at steipete.me.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Perpetually running proactive agents are not a technology problem but a token problem, and no ordinary subscription would survive one.

  Their words

  I mean, honestly, that's not so much a tech problem. It's more a token problem where we could do that today, but you wouldn't get very far with your subscription and not everyone is willing to spend so many tokens.

  Peter Steinberger: "Fun Is Velocity"youtube.com

Co-founded Neuralink and founded Science Corp, which is building a retinal implant; writes about neural interfaces and biology.

From one piece Max Hodak: Average Is Not Good Enough 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

• Our readingkorrents.com

  If nobody can say what an experiment costs, everyone behaves as though experiments are free — it does not cost dollars, it costs media, and media comes from the fridge.

  Their words

  And so if nobody knows how much an experiment costs, like every time you like grow up a new cell line or every time we make a new a new probe in in the fab, how much does that loop cost? Nobody knows. Therefore, experiments are free. Um, it doesn't cost dollars. It costs media. And media comes from the fridge.

  Max Hodak: Average Is Not Good Enoughyoutube.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Some ideas are worth funding with fifty million dollars or with nothing, and never with five million, because underfunding buys you an ambiguous outcome instead of an answer.

  Their words

  there are definitely some ideas that are worth funding with $50 million or zero dollars, but not $5 million. Um you won't run the experiment. It'll be really frustrating experience. You'll get an ambiguous outcome.

  Max Hodak: Average Is Not Good Enoughyoutube.com

Co-founder and CEO of Stripe and co-founder of the Arc Institute. Keeps a personal site of reading lists, open questions and notes on scientific progress and how research is funded.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The new wave of businesses is not lightweight slop: the median one is doing better than a year ago, and more of them clear every revenue threshold.

  Their words

  Um, but actually the median business, uh, is doing better this year than a year ago. Um, and so and then if we kind of, um, stratify and look at the probability that any given business will reach some revenue threshold, a million dollars, five million dollars, 10 million dollars, whatever, um, those all seem to be getting better.

  youtube.com

Professor at Wharton studying how people actually use AI, and author of Co-Intelligence. Writes One Useful Thing, where the claims are dated and testable because the thing they describe keeps changing under them.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Higher-priced AI subscription tiers mainly buy more hours of agent usage rather than a smarter underlying model

  Their words

  The more expensive plans are mostly buying you more hours of AI labor, not smarter AI.

  oneusefulthing.org

Investment researcher and engineer who runs Lyn Alden Investment Strategy, writing on macroeconomics, currency systems and equity analysis.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  A large generation of small business owners is aging and looking for liquidity or diversification as they plan succession.

  America

  Their words

  Privately held businesses in the United States are collectively worth trillions of dollars, and demographically speaking, they have an aging set of owners who are seeking liquidity or diversification as they explore how to pass on what they've built.

  lynalden.com

Programmer based in Vancouver who writes at scattered-thoughts.net about databases, programming language design and developer tools; author of the Imp, Dida and Zest language experiments.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Cheap flat-rate AI subscription pricing is a temporary loss-leader that will be phased out once users are hooked

  Their words

  The subscriptions to frontier models are a very good deal, but it looks like they are being phased out now that everyone is hooked.

  Artificial adventuresscattered-thoughts.net

Chief executive of Intel since 2025, founder of the venture firm Walden International and chief executive of Cadence Design Systems for thirteen years.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  A hardware startup's first customer should be a hyperscaler, because only that scale turns a design win into a business.

  startups

  Their words

  And usually I like the customer is hyper scale. They have the scale. If they like what you have, they're willing to pay millions of dollars next few years. And even giving some warrant is worth it because you have a big one customer, you can scale.

  youtube.com

Builds developer tools — SST, and now OpenCode at Anomaly. Posts constantly on x.com and writes almost never; the blog stopped in 2021.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Get the positioning right and the world keeps handing you wins you never predicted, because well-funded rivals will all use a neutral party to advance their own interests.

  Their words

  If you get your positioning right, the world just keeps handing you wins that you didn't even expect. So like we never predicted this exact scenario but like our fundamental understanding of the position was right. like if if there is a neutral party, all these companies with billions of dollars will kind of use a neutral party to advance their own like company's interests.

  Building OpenCode with Dax Raadyoutube.com

Founder of Terraform Industries and formerly a physicist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory; writes about energy, space and manufacturing.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Starship will bring the price of low Earth orbit down to roughly a hundred dollars a kilogram.

  Their words

  Starship promises a near future with launch costs to LEO of perhaps $100/kg.

  How to build a lunar mass drivercaseyhandmer.wordpress.com

Researcher on distributed systems and local-first software at the University of Cambridge; wrote Designing Data-Intensive Applications.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The reason a software-as-a-service business can charge a subscription is that it holds a gun to the customer's head over their own data.

  SaaS

  Their words

  software as a service businesses, for example the whole reason why they can charge a subscription is because they are able to essentially hold a gun to the customer's head and say, "Pay us at your subscription, otherwise we will delete all your data."

  youtube.com

Scientist and writer on quantum computing, memory systems and metascience; co-wrote the standard quantum computation textbook and wrote Reinventing Discovery.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Ask anyone whether they would have worked the same way with a million dollars at stake and the answer is invariably no: they tried, but they did not really try.

  Their words

  if a million dollars had been at stake, like would you have put the same effort in? And the answer is no. Um sort of invariably. Um like they've tried, but they haven't really tried.

  youtube.com

Co-founder of NVIDIA and, as of 2026, its chief executive; the company designs the GPUs most large AI models are trained on.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Someone paying a thousand dollars per million tokens is just around the corner, because intelligence is a product that segments by grade like phones do.

  Their words

  You know, the idea that somebody's willing to pay $1000 per million tokens is just around the corner. It's not if, it's only when.

  youtube.com

Founder and chief analyst of SemiAnalysis; reports on semiconductor supply chains, AI datacentre economics and what the chip export controls actually do.

From one piece Dylan Patel — The single biggest bottleneck to scaling AI compute 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The semiconductor supply chain will underbuild not because it cannot expand but because nobody in it believes the demand is real.

  Their words

  Um in general the semiconductor supply chain has not right it's lived through the booms and bust and uh we can talk a bit more about it but basically no one you know some players as of very recently have like woken up but in general no one really sees demand for 200 gawatts a year of AI chips or you know trillions of dollars of spend a year in the semiconductor supply chain.

  youtube.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Hundreds of billions of dollars of AI value rest on about a billion dollars of lithography tooling that cannot be scaled quickly.

  data centers

  Their words

  oh 50 gigawatts of economic you know sort of capex in in the data center and what gets built on top of that in terms of tokens is even larger right it might be hundred billion dollars worth of AI value into the supply chain is held up by this $1.2 two billion dollars worth of tooling that simply just cannot expand its supply chain quickly.

  youtube.com

Co-founder and CEO of Anthropic; previously VP of research at OpenAI.

From one piece Dario Amodei — “We are near the end of the exponential” 4 beliefs, in the piece's order there

• Our readingkorrents.com

  If a lab is off by a single year in its revenue forecast, no hedge on Earth stops the compute it already bought from bankrupting it.

  Their words

  And if my if my revenue is not a trillion dollars, if it's even 800 billion, there's no force on Earth. There's there's no hedge on Earth that could stop me from going bankrupt if I if I buy that much compute.

  youtube.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Continual learning will probably be solved within a year or two, but the trillions of dollars do not depend on solving it.

  Their words

  I think the trillions of dollars a year market, maybe all of the national security implications and the safety implications that I wrote about in adolescence of technology can happen without it, but I I I also think we, and I imagine others, are working on it. And I think there's a good chance that that, you know, that we get there within the next year or two.

  youtube.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Robotics will be revolutionised a year or two behind the country of geniuses, and getting there does not require human-like learning.

  Their words

  does that mean the robotics industry will also be generating trillions of dollars of revenue? My answer there is yes, but there will be the same extremely fast but not infinitely fast diffusion. So, will robotics be be revolutionized? Yeah, maybe tack on another year or two.

  youtube.com

+ 1 more

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Even a country of geniuses in a datacentre will not be an infinitely compelling product; it buys three to ten times growth a year, not instant adoption.

  AGIdata centers

  Their words

  but it's not an infinitely compelling product, and I don't think even AGI or powerful AI or country of geniuses in a data center will be an infinitely compelling product. It will be a compelling product enough maybe to get three or five or 10x a year growth even when you're in the hundreds of billions of dollars, which is extremely hard to do and has never been done in history before, but not infinitely fast.

  youtube.com

• Our reading nowkorrents.com

  Manufacturing and mining in space will never be lucrative enough to pay for human settlement of space.

  Their words, before

  Furthermore, I believe it’s very unlikely that space-based manufacturing or mining could be lucrative enough to fund the venture.

  Their words now

  Today, exploding demand for power-intensive AI applications provides enough of an upside to justify producing components in space, providing the economic engine necessary to justify and fund the trillions of dollars necessary to build and sustain space factories.

Writer of MacSparky and author of the MacSparky Field Guides on Apple productivity software. A lawyer for 30 years before going full-time on the site, he co-hosts the Mac Power Users and Focused podcasts.

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Readwise Reader

  Their words

  I continue to get a lot of value out of my Readwise subscription in terms of capturing and organizing what I read.

  macsparky.com

Founder of WP Engine and Smart Bear; writes A Smart Bear, long essays on strategy, pricing and how startups actually fail.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Every subscription business has a hard ceiling on its size: new customers per month divided by the cancellation rate.

  Their words

  So let's suppose you add 100 customers a month and you have 5% cancellation. So 100 divided by 5% is 2,000. So a company like that will never have more than 2,000 customers.

  youtube.com

American author of Liar's Poker, Moneyball, The Big Short and The Undoing Project, and host of the podcast Against the Rules.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  An athlete who moves his family across the country for a few million dollars more is trading a life that loves him for money that will not improve it.

  Their words

  the average athlete who's taking a few million dollars more to move his wife and kids from one family, one city that they loves him and that he loves to some strange place where everybody's going to be unhappy.

  10 Years of Acquired (with Michael Lewis)youtube.com

Marketing author and daily blogger; founder of the altMBA and the Akimbo workshops, and author of books including Purple Cow and This Is Marketing.

• Recommendsaffiliate linkrcmnd.app

  Roon

  Their words

  Roon is software to control your home stereo. I have a lifetime subscription, and the link gets you thirty days for free. If you love music, you'll get a lot out of this.

  seths.blog

Head of growth at Chess.com, previously growth and monetization lead at Grammarly and Duolingo and a product manager at Google.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Retention is what makes a consumer subscription business possible: without it the whole burden falls on getting a stranger to pay on day one.

  Their words

  Yeah, I mean user retention is gold for consumer subscription companies. If you don't retain your users, then a lot of the onus is on getting them to pay on like day one. That's super hard, right?

  youtube.com

Co-founder and chief executive of Sierra, chairman of the board of OpenAI, and formerly co-chief executive of Salesforce and chief technology officer of Facebook.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  An applied AI company should not train its own foundation model, because a foundation model is the fastest deteriorating asset there is.

  Their words

  I mean I've heard from multiple investors that foundation models are the fastest deteriorating asset of all time. And so if step one of your business is to burn through tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars of capital before you find product market fit and that asset has value for like a a week, I'm not sure it's like a great business model.

  youtube.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Ten cents of electricity generates a thousand dollars of economic value in AI, so the price of power barely matters to the labs.

  energy

  Their words

  well their cost of serving it is is like maybe a buck per million tokens or something like that and the cost of electricity is about 10% of that. So it's like 10 cents of electricity is generating $1,000 worth of economic value.

  youtube.com

Chairman and chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, which he has led since 2005 after turning around Bank One.

From one piece The Jamie Dimon Interview: How JP Morgan Became an $800 Billion Bank 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

• Our readingkorrents.com

  A margin only counts while you are still investing heavily, because cutting the investment raises this year's margin and lowers the long-term one.

  Their words

  we can cut billions of dollars of marketing out tomorrow. We can stop opening branches and save a billion dollars next year. We could do a lot of things. Your margins will go up. Your growth will go down. Your long-term margins will probably get worse.

  youtube.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Rescuing a failing bank at the government's request is not worth doing again, because a later administration will make you pay for the sins you inherited.

  government

  Their words

  So, you while we kind of saved the system a lot, we bailed a lot of people out, they made us pay 5 billion dollars on the more the bad mortgages that Bear Stearns had done. And that's what made me make the statement I wouldn't do it again.

  youtube.com

Creator of Flask and Jinja. Writes about software at lucumr.pocoo.org.

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Claude Code

  Their words

  For all intents and purposes, here’s what I do: I predominently use Claude Code with the cheaper Max subscription for $100 a month

  lucumr.pocoo.org

Structural engineer and senior infrastructure fellow at the Institute for Progress; writes Construction Physics on why physical things cost what they cost.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The binding constraint on building anything in America is permitting and litigation, not money.

  America

  Their words

  Political costs and civic opposition will often make a technology unviable regardless of how the dollars and cents add up.

  Why we stopped building subways cheaplyworksinprogress.news

Founder of what became Bloomberg New Energy Finance; writes and speaks on clean energy, hydrogen and the economics of the transition, and hosts the Cleaning Up podcast.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Direct air capture costing hundreds of dollars per tonne is too expensive to be part of the climate solution.

  Their words

  Whatever the solution to climate change is going to be, it is certainly not going to involve anything that costs $1,000 per tonne of carbon removed, or even the $400 to $600 that they promise by 2030.

  Why Tony Blair needs to reset his climate resetliebreich.com

Development economist; writes Global Developments, on growth, history and the numbers behind them.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Foreign aid was a bipartisan American commitment for eight decades, with Republican and Democratic presidents spending within a few billion dollars a year of each other.

  America

  Their words

  The longevity of that consensus is itself remarkable: in 79 years of data, Republican presidents spent an average of $34 billion a year on aid, while Democrats spent $40 billion.

  A World Without Aid?global-developments.org

From one piece DeepSeek, China, OpenAI, NVIDIA, xAI, TSMC, Stargate, and AI Megaclusters | Lex Fridman Podcast #459 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

• Our readingkorrents.com

  OpenAI's 2022 bet on GPT-4 was a larger gamble than any training run since: all of its compute, for months, on an architecture nobody at Google believed in.

  OpenAIGoogle

  Their words

  I think it's even more impressive what OpenAI did in 2022. At the time, no one believed in mixture of experts models at Google who had all the researchers. OpenAI had such little compute and they devoted all of their compute for many months, all of it, 100% for many months to GPT-4 with a brand-new architecture with no belief that, "Hey, let me spend a couple of hundred million dollars, which is all of the money I have on this model." That is truly YOLO.

  youtube.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Completely in-sourcing semiconductor manufacturing to the United States is possible, and it would take a decade and a trillion dollars.

  America

  Their words

  And so going back, can the US build it here? Yes, but it's going to take a ton of money. I truly think to revolutionize and completely in-source semiconductors would take a decade and a trillion dollars.

  youtube.com

• Usesrcmnd.app

  ChatGPT Plus

  Their words

  Like probably most AI users, I use ChatGPT, particularly on my phone. I pay for the Plus subscription because I use it enough to get a lot of value out of it.

  lucumr.pocoo.org

Growth advisor and operator who has led growth at Miro, Amplitude, Dropbox and SurveyMonkey.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Promising that a homepage or marketing-site redesign will drive acquisition is a failed promise, and usually a million-dollar one.

  Their words

  But to ever promise a homepage redesign or marketing site redesign in order to drive more acquisition is a failed promise that is going to be led by lots of agency money spending, uh often a million dollars plus

  youtube.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The United States is not at risk of a financial crisis caused by the size of its government debt.

  Americagovernment

  Their words

  Stabilizing factors such as the global demand for U.S. dollars and debt denominated in its own currency suggest an era of fiscal dominance in the U.S. that's less dramatic than alarmists predict but more persistent and intractable than optimists hope.

  Full Steam Ahead: All Aboard Fiscal Dominancelynalden.com

Writer of the blog Putanumonit and the newsletter Second Person, on rationality, dating and probability; based in New York.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Subscription platforms like Substack and OnlyFans tend to become a Girardian bubble, where a few visible successes obscure the many who quietly give up after failing to build an audience.

  Their words

  I suspect that both Substack and OnlyFans may become a Girardian bubble. Everyone joins after hearing from the few people who succeed; the thousands who slink away after months of effort netted them a mere 17 subscribers usually do so quietly.

  putanumonit.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Below about a thousand dollars a kilowatt of capital cost, the right way to run a plant is intermittently on raw solar with no batteries at all.

  solar

  Their words

  For loads below $1000/kW, intermittent operation with some modest solar array oversizing is the winning strategy. Above $1000/kW, we charge and discharge batteries daily to run them.

  Solar and batteries for generic use casescaseyhandmer.wordpress.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  NASA's Space Launch System has consumed more than a hundred billion dollars and delivered almost nothing.

  Their words

  Four years on, the program has consumed another $20b with nothing to show for it.

  SLS is still a national disgracecaseyhandmer.wordpress.com

Co-founder of WordPress and founder of Automattic; blogs at ma.tt.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  A business making hundreds of millions from an open source project owes it money or contribution, and can be refused its trademarks if it gives neither.

  open source

  Their words

  This isn’t a money grab: it’s an expectation that any business making hundreds of millions of dollars off of an open source project ought to give back, and if they don’t, then they can’t use its trademarks.

  WPE & Trademarksma.tt

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Even the most commercially successful books are written for a very small group of people rather than for everyone.

  Their words

  Uh Harry Potter, the most successful uh book franchise in history, it made the author over a billion dollars. That book is for almost no one. Right? That book is for precocious 12-year-olds and people who like to remember what was like to be a precocious 12-year-old. That's not everyone. That's a very small group of people.

  youtube.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Ten billion dollars over ten years would deliver most of a list of missing life-saving health technologies, so their absence is a funding choice rather than a scientific limit.

  Their words

  With an extra $10 billion over 10 years I’m pretty sure we’d get to 5 or 6 of the 10 on the list, and millions of unnecessary deaths would be prevented.

  10 technologies that won't exist in 5 yearsblog.jacobtrefethen.com

Journalist; wrote We Are Eating the Earth on food and climate, and writes the newsletter Emissions.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Support for biofuels raises food prices and worsens global hunger.

  Americagovernment

  Their words

  It’s not exactly news that the American government’s support for biofuels increases food prices, intensifies global hunger and wastes taxpayer dollars.

  A Climate Killer Disguised as a Climate Solutionmichaelgrunwald.substack.com

Designer, product manager, YouTuber and developer who has written about technology at Birchtree since 2010. He makes the Quick Reviews and Quick Notes apps and the A Better Computer YouTube channel.

• Recommendsrcmnd.app

  Petey

  Their words

  The app costs a few dollars up front and then has an optional subscription for unlimited requests, but I would recommend going directly to OpenAI’s developer dashboard, creating your own account, and copy/pasting your own API key into Petey.

  thesweetsetup.com

Writer and consultant on formal methods and software correctness; author of Practical TLA+ and Logic for Programmers.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The one uncontested difference between software and other engineering is velocity: changing software costs seconds where changing a physical system costs weeks and thousands of dollars.

  Their words

  We can change software much faster than anybody else can change their systems.

  We Are Not Specialhillelwayne.com

Programmer and writer; specified JSON, wrote JavaScript: The Good Parts, JSLint and How JavaScript Works.

• Mixed onrcmnd.app

  Adobe CS4

  Their words

  I occasionally use these Adobe CS4 programs: Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Acrobat, Illustrator, and Flash. I don't use any of them enough to justify a subscription to their latest cloud offerings.

  usesthis.com

Full-stack developer, creator of Tailwind CSS; writes at adamwathan.me and makes courses and screencasts for web developers.

• Likedrcmnd.app

  Pixelmator

  Their words

  I don't do a ton of raster image editing but when I do Pixelmator is great. Has all of the features someone like me needs from Photoshop without getting sucked into Adobe's whole subscription system.

  adamwathan.me

Co-founder, chairman and chief investment officer of Ritholtz Wealth Management. Hosts the Masters in Business podcast for Bloomberg and wrote How NOT to Invest.

• Recommendsaffiliate linkrcmnd.app

  Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World

  Their words

  Bradley Hope and Tom Wright, Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World: Is financial fraud becoming its own sub-genre? This reporting into yet another fraud reminds me of The Spider Network or Bad Blood. What distinguishes this one is the size: it involved billions of dollars.

  ritholtz.com

Free software developer; maintainer of sway, wlroots, aerc and scdoc, and founder of the SourceHut (sr.ht) software forge.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  A few hundred dollars a month is nothing to a company and transformative to a project, so engineers should be the ones asking their employers to pay it.

  open source

  Their words

  A $250/mo recurring donation to would be a drop in the bucket of most businesses, but a major boon to any open source project, with which the business will almost certainly see tangible value-add as a result.

  The Commons Clause will destroy open sourcedrewdevault.com

Writer and researcher on how people organise online; wrote Working in Public, on the maintenance of open-source software, and Antimemetics.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Open source on GitHub creates enormous value that the platform hosting it captures none of, while its policies limit how maintainers may earn.

  open source

  Their words

  Open source projects on GitHub represent billions of dollars in value creation, but none of that is captured on GitHub.

  Who pays the toolmakers?nadia.xyz